On President Trump's first day back in office, he signed a memorandum instructing the Administrator of the General Services Administration and other appropriate agency and department heads to submit recommendations to promote "beautiful Federal civic architecture". Mr. Catesby Leigh will discuss the potential impacts of this memorandum, as well as what "beautiful Federal civic architecture" might look like.

Friday, April 11, 2025

Capital Hilton Hotel

1001 16th St NW,, Washington, DC 20036

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Doors Open: 5:00 pm, Presentation: 5:30 pm

Reception to Follow

Catesby Leigh writes about public art and architecture, urban design and fine art, with a particular focus on the nature of monumentality in the visual arts—and above all in commemorative art. A native of Washington D.C., Leigh spent most of the 1980s working as a reporter in South America, an experience that deepened his interest in architecture. After returning to Washington, Leigh met the architectural historian Henry Hope Reed, who introduced him to Geoffrey Scott’s critical masterwork, The Architecture of Humanism, and to Reed’s own The Golden City. Both books rejected the premises of the modernist “secession” from the humanist tradition.

Leigh’s first architecture articles appeared in 1991, and since then he has contributed art and architecture criticism to publications including City Journal, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, National Review, Modern Age, The Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard. Topics have included the federal government’s architectural patronage, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall, the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, classical sculpture, the New Urbanism, and architecture at Princeton University, Leigh’s alma mater.

He is a co-founder and past chair of the National Civic Art Society, which seeks to restore the classical and other humanistic traditions in design as necessary keys to building a public realm worthy of the nation.